June 2010 - Lorna Syson (Lorna Syson Textiles)

As one of our June 2010 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award winners, Lorna Syson creates hand-made sculptural textiles for home soft furnishings from her Midlands based studio.

Lorna also works on larger scale installations for hotels, shop decor and interior designers, offering a completely unique and bespoke service.

June 2010 - Natalie Pierce-Jones (Fairypants)

As one of our June 2010 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award winners, Natalie Pierce-Jones' business Fairypants is a complete range of handmade dresses, corsets, fairy tutus, jewellery and accessories.

Offering a bespoke service from start to finish, along with a large selection of 'off the peg' items - customers can see a dress that has already been designed and made, then they alter it to suit their purpose. This is perfect for customers who want a bespoke dress, but have no idea where to start when designing it themselves.

June 2010 - Ijeoma Iwuoha (myTaskAngel)

As one of our June 2010 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award winners, Ijeoma Iwuoha's myTaskAngel is a online service that enables people overwhelmed with their daily to-do lists find qualified and eligible "angels" within their neighbourhood or community to complete these tasks for them.

This service works by allowing you post a task you need completed, specify your budget and then relax and wait for the response of willing angels within our trusted network who are keen on completing these tasks for you.

June 2010 - Fred Clough (Scholify.com)

As one of our June 2010 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award winners, Fred Clough's Scholify com is a website designed to promote collaborative learning for students.

Dedicated to all things student - Scholify provides a free platform for young people to interact and collaborate on academic and educational themed topics, allowing them to create spaces to work on group projects and discuss ideas related to their studies with the wider community.

June 2010 - Luke Boulton-Major (Karma Active)

As one of our June 2010 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award winners, Luke Boulton-Major's company Karma Active currently provide alternative sports programmes to school children, and will be using the £1,000 prize money to develop an instructor pack which is purchased by potential instructors and trains them in how to deliver the Martial Arts Pack for their schools and community groups.

June 2010 - Lisa Bean (Gradvert)

As one of our June 2010 Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award winners, Lisa Bean's company LMBT Solutions is a consultancy firm specialising in student and graduate development and networking.

Under the registered trademark of Gradvert the company has been established to provide students and graduates with the tools, training, development and networking opportunities needed to achieve success in business.

Marketing Masterclass Session 5: Effective Marketing Management

In this video, Neil Wilkins (Viper Marketing and Communications Group) talks about how you can become an effective, positive marketing leader.

For more information on Neil Wilkins or Viper Marketing, visit: www.vmcg.co.uk 

 

Neil: In this session, we will look at effective marketing management. How do you become a more effective marketing manager?

The first point is you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses as a manager - so do a SWOT analysis. Look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that you face in your career.

The second thing you need to be doing is understanding your leadership style, because that will be the platform and the basis from which you can actually develop effective marketing management tools, techniques and approaches to engage with your team and the people that are important to you.

Communication is a very, very key factor here. Understand your communication style and also the style of your team and the people you need to communicate with, because you need to blend those styles depending on the time, the place and the sorts of challenges you're facing. Effective communication is right at the centre of effective marketing management. It's all about communicating your strategy, your goals, your desires and then making sure that, over time, you continue with that type of communication so things are consistent, people know where they stand and, doing that, you'll ensure that you get the committment from them to engage with them and keep control of your management processes. Communication is so vitally important in effective marketing management.

A lot of the most effective managers get good teams of people around them - they aren't necessarily technically experts in everything. And in many ways, a good marketing person doesn't actually have to be an expert in many things, but by putting together a really good team and keeping a very clear focus and communication on the types of roles, the types of things you're looking to deliver, you can actually make a huge difference to your organisation.

Sir Clive Woodward and the England rugby team is a very, very clear example of a manager putting together a team of experts around them, working toward a very, very clearly-defined goal and then using good interpersonal skills to get the best out of people. There are many other examples, but that's a particularly relevant one for this session.

So surround yourself with winners, technical experts, people who can actually help you achieve your goals and your strategy. And you'll find that deliver of those types of things will become far more intuitive.

It's also about unlocking potential through meaning and through empowerment. So make sure you're not trying to do everything yourself. The most effective leaders are those who can manage campaigns, manage marketing plans, manage strategy without actually doing an awful lot themselves because the experts in the teams they have around them will enable those things to happen.

Delegate, but not always. Get an insight into the team working, the way that your team actually reflects and behaves with each other and make sure that you are the oil that is greasing those wheels of teamwork and of interaction within your organisation.

Be open and honest with all communication and make sure that any decision-making is delivered against very clear objectives through which people actually are already engaged.

And make sure that you deliver effective time-management, both with yourself and also with your team.

Develop individuals by saying 'no' occasionally. Develop them by giving them very SMART objectives. The best style of marketing management is when people know what's expected of them and when they're given the control and committment to make things happen.

So it is all about, as we said right at the outset, communication and particularly trust to actually making this work.

[End of audio]

Ben Scrimgeour (Ben Scrimgeour Building Workshop)

In February 2010, Ben and Rosemary Scrimgeour took home one of the Shell LiveWIRE £1,000 Grand Ideas Awards. Since then, their business has been enjoying overwhelming success and PR.

The Ben Scrimgeour Building Workshop decided to create a video, showing other aspiring and new entreprenuers how the Shell LiveWIRE award and the subsequent PR has helped them.

To find out more visit:
www.shell-livewire.org/network/Building%20Workshop

Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 Promo

The £10,000 Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 is now open for entry at: www.shell-livewire.org/awards

The video above shows some of the LiveWIRE winners since 1982.

Glenn Buchan & Kilian Palop (Adspad)

We caught up with former Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award winners Glenn Buchan & Kilian Palop (Adspad) in February 2010 to hear how winning the award in 2009 provided excellent PR coverage and the funding they needed to kickstart their business providing local advertising to students in Aberdeen.

For more info about Adspad visit:
www.adspad.co.uk

Daniel Sutherland (Milkistar)

We caught up with former Shell LiveWIRE Grand Ideas Award winner Daniel Sutherland to hear how winning the award gave him the finance and confidence to help develop his revolutionary new 'Milkistar' baby feeding bottle, led to further funding for his business and provided a major PR boost along the way.

For more info about Daniel and the Milkistar visit:
www.shell-livewire.org/network/ds
www.milkistar.com